This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, by David Ing.

[8:20]

Welcome by Sander van der Leeuw, Foundation Professor, Dean of the School of Sustainability, Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Here because something we need to do

Beyond talk

Tipping points

Conference is second in series launched by 2008 by Stockholm Resilience Centre

Independent of organizations

Core is Resilience Alliance, but important to get a wider community, e.g. vulnerability community

Global environmental change organization will change over next few years, as unable to deal

Deliberately focused on a theme, across sectors

Only with a wide thematic view, that will be able to deal with issues at hand

ASU

10 years ago, president, who had founded Earth Institute at Columbia, wanted to put sustainability at the core

Jed Redman, social environmental research

A lot on making the campus carbon neutral

4 years ago, created the first school of sustainability

Now 500 undergrads, 100 grad students, 170 minor student

Across engineering, law, etc.

Break down the ivory tower, transdisciplinarity, and externally

University as core in the region

22 cities

Green shirts

Haven't done anything at this scale, at the university

Printed program is not the final, final is on the web site

Heard Museum: green dot on badge

Monday: policy day

Over lunch, Jared Blumenthal

Energy policy, water policy

Semester break, a lot of facilities are changed, i.e. catering facilities in this building

Art manifestations

Alan AtKisson: one foot in academia, one foot on the ground

Adventurous career: helping in drug treatments, sustainability

Also a musician

[Alan AtKisson]

Keeping Japan in thoughts, potential for nuclear disaster

Am not a researcher

Do publish infrequently

Primarily a practitioner

Usually spend time listening to researchers, and translating into other things

Thus, a reverse to be speaking

We tend to downplay the pleasure in the research

Bird migrations: why?

Report on meetings from yesterday

Re-energizing research .. in the context of complex systems

Why so little action on sustainability, considering so much talk?

Oren Young: 5 big problems

1. Governance

2. Inertia

Misplaced confidence in technology and substitutability

Cognition: other people don't get it

Human nature: making choices that don't look reasonable

Johan Rockstrom: new social contract between science and society

Elinor Ostrom: no panaceas, scared of adopting one global solution

Brad Allenby: Nobody understands where technology is going

Carlo Jaeger: moved byond the stage of warning

John Finnigan: couple planetary boundaries to societal limit?

Need to understand

Speed of change

Types of change

Scaling up

Process of learning

Developing

New roles

Multi-modal, transdisciplinary

Improve communications

Complex systems thinker by nature?

Haven't grappled with what it means to be an animal, and overuse resources

We don't deal with the illusion of sustainability: Mad Hatter's Tea Party, clean cup, move down, so eventually return back to the situation

Hard to get these ideas across without metaphors

Leading environment economist, in the EU

Discount rate so that all species look less valuable in the future than in the present?

Economist said: don't worry, there's genetic engineering, and if society want them, can then recreate the species

Substitutability

This is someone on our side

Job is to take things like ...

Limits to growth, planetary boundaries ...

... and convert to ...

Workshops, e.g. Strategy for Green Transformation (for Egypt)

Looking for leverage points and change agents (individual people)

Action sense

Planners

Methods:

When started doing sustainability consulting 20 years ago, was the only one

Reports for a corporate client, Baltic Sea

Sometimes workshops, scenarios so can make decisions

Not science, but useful

Some unconventional methods

Playing guitar to defense

Sing

It's an inexact science

Do a lot of training with planners: jumping to answer, missing the thinking

Do business, not science

Started enterprise as business, ability to fail

If sold work, a way of sharpening an axe

Not making a lot of money

Read Limits to Growth, 1972; Ehrlich; etc.

Worked with Dana Meadows

Dana didn't want to go to Sweden, suggested Alan take it

Wall Street Journal in 2008, acknowledge that Limits to Growth might have been right

Eco:nomics Conference

They're making money off this

But they're not thinking about planetary boundaries

If 2 degrees change, then OECD countries would have to deharmonize

Happen fast enough? Exponential growth

Can't talk about this, sing

We see exponential growth, the rest of the world sees a black hole of money

Postulate: If we are in the "great acceleration", then we need an accelerated human response

Still takes Limits to Growth seriously

Pleasant future

No fun at all future

Sustainability jargon jungle

Sustainble Development Action Cycle: 9-step framework

From Alan AtKission,The Sustainability Transformation, Earthscan 2010

a. Boundaries

b. Thresholds

c. Goals

Policy makers can't start with complex systems, then need to start with indicators

Don't see analyses, entry points

Most people grab whatever is available

Simplify to ISIS:

Indicators

Systems

Innovation

Strategy

Action

Lure people into the complexity of the system, by looking at indicators

Intellectual roots?

Compass of sustainability, based on Herman Daly's work

1997: Daly as foundation for indicator definition

People from other cultures don't like well-being of individuals as hierarchical on top of society, economy and nature

Economy and nature interconnected

Thus, compass rather than hierarchical

Could be controversial with nature being first

Business people won't listen if you tell them they're secondary

Take indicators, normalize, and aggregate them up

Problem: getting information through

The Signal Path: Research --> Decision

After transmitting the message, release control by people who filter, weighting and evaluation

Was against aggregating indicators

However, decision makers wanted a single number, something simple

Market signal: can't force people to interact with information in a way I think might be intellectually rigourous

Flashing red light, then then ask why, and then go to the diaggregated level

Still do compass today

Schools also use compass, sometimes for education for sustainable development

Why do this?

Faith: when commitment, more chance it's true

Optimists get more done than pessimists

The Hope Graph

Adapted from Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations

On one side, have unsustainable technologies and trends, that are exponential, with a coming collapse

But also a sustainable technology and trends curve, exponential, can we make it grow faster

Threshold

Applied Innovation Diffusion Theory

The Amoeba of Cultural Change: a map of change

Fun, can do it as role playing game

Example, restoring fishing in Lake Edwards: rule of law isn't quite right today, maybe in the future

Sustainable Seattle, started in 1993

Creating indicators

Now, 20 years later, creating Happiness Index, based on Gross National Happiness from Bhutan

ISIS Pyramid

How to get people engaged in a participatory way

Start with indicators

Look at systems, looking for entry points with leverage

When have leverage point, then is it education, economic, etc.? for most impact